Mark Steyn is my favorite conservative writer. He's intelligent, perceptive, honest, articulate... and outrageously funny. For pretty much the same reasons, Christopher Hitchens is my favorite liberal writer. I frequently disagree with his ideology and with his resulting policy prescriptions (he is a liberal, after all), but I almost always enjoy reading what he writes. He presents his opinions in a way that does not insult the intelligence of his ideological opponents (at least the intellectually honest ones), and he almost always does so in an entertaining way.
He does, however, have a gift for savaging those who purport to be his ideological allies, but who are obviously self-serving phonies. A stellar example of this is his merciless review of Michael Moore's "documentary", Fahrenheit 9/11. It's a lengthy essay, mainly because Moore provides such a target-rich environment, but it's well worth taking the time to see Hitchens rhetorically reduce Moore to a smoldering heap of ashes.
This excerpt summarizes nicely Hitchens' thesis:
To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of c--- would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.
Read on to learn everything you need to know about Moore.
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